


Wanderers

by Greenygal



Category: Colors in the Dreamweaver's Loom Series - Beth Hilgartner
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:54:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28147941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greenygal/pseuds/Greenygal
Summary: "'Home is a place in the heart,'" the Wanderer quoted softly.  "I will send you to the Dreamweaver's cottage; she needs you.  There you may make decisions together about where you will settle and how you will live."
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Wanderers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mayhap](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayhap/gifts).



In the days after their return, Vihena was quieter than Remarr had ever seen her, a guilty ghost in their midst. It was clear that Iobeh's near-death at her hands weighed heavily on her, her remorse clear in every word and look she gave the Orathi girl. Iobeh, characteristically, responded with forgiveness, and even Karivet's cold anger had subsided. And they all had more than enough to attend to, for though the Wanderer's healing touch had spared Eikoheh's life and her eyes, she was still terribly drained by grief and exhaustion, too weak even to leave her pallet. The Five took up both the care of the ailing weaver and all the neglected, necessary chores of her household and the twins'; it made for long days, at the beginning, and Remarr was distractedly grateful that Vihena made no complaint about mundane household chores. (She was also, thankfully, considerably better at dealing with the Orathi goat flocks than he was—a certain kindred stubbornness, perhaps.) Occupied as they were with those immediate needs, it became easy to set aside all else, and when they settled in front of the hearth at the end of the day, they talked only of small things. 

But Vihena's silence told its own story. When temper flared in her eyes—and Remarr would admit to having provoked it more than once—she closed her mouth on whatever angry words she might have spoken, or left the room entirely. Most astonishing to Remarr, when Karivet had pointedly reminded her that the Orathi villagers would not welcome sword-wielding outsiders in their midst, Vihena had surrendered her blade docilely; it hung untouched on the wall of Karivet and Iobeh's house. 

While Remarr hadn't welcomed the frustrated viciousness Vihena had descended to while stranded in 'Tsan's world, this stifled version of their swordswoman seemed worryingly wrong.

None of them had spoken of the future, and as the days passed, it began to seem as if they had always lived here. Why not, Remarr thought wearily; it wasn't as if he had any home to return to. Unlike Vihena.

He finally asked her the question outright, one quiet cool night when he found her staring at the trees at the edge of the twins' steading: "When will you leave?"

Her head jerked up in surprise. "What?"

"When will you leave?" he repeated, calm, as if the question was an idle one. "The weather is beginning to turn; you would do best to leave for the desert before the winter comes. It will be harder to travel in the snow."

"Leave for the desert." Vihena repeated the words slowly, as if tasting them and finding the flavor uncertain. "Rejoin my clan, take up my life just as it was—and leave the rest of you?"

"I am sure that all of clan Khesst will be an adequate replacement for our misfit selves," Remarr said, his flippant tone covering sudden pain. Vihena had a home, and a family as well, the clan that had cast out Remarr and embraced her in his stead. She wasn't fool enough to reject that gift. And one of them might as well be happy.

She didn't look happy. "Clan Khesst," she said flatly, "where an outcast is despised for a weakling and a coward."

Remarr kept his reaction to that off his face. "I am used to being despised by Khedathi, Vihena. Khesst is hardly unique in that."

"Well, I don't want to despise you!" she snapped.

Remarr couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. "You'll forgive me if I say that comes as a surprise," he said dryly, and Vihena flinched.

"When I lived in the City, I wanted to be a Khedathi more than anything in life," she said softly, looking down at her hands. "Since I was old enough to understand, all I ever saw was how strong they were, how free—I wanted that desperately, to not be shut into the patterns my life demanded of me." She sighed. "Perhaps that's why I've been so opposed to marrying Tedevarr, even."

Remarr's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Tedevarr has come courting you?" 

"Yes," she said grumpily, sounding more like herself than she had in weeks. "And he's a good swordsman and prosperous and likeable and he'd certainly be a better father than mine and my foster-mother approves, and I have no good reason to say no."

Remarr considered his teenage memories of his former clanmate. "He's also quite handsome, as I recall." 

Vihena's head jerked up. "Remarr," she said warningly, "if _you_ tell me I should marry him, I'm going to--" she hesitated, then concluded somewhat awkwardly, "scream at the top of my lungs until my voice gives out."

Remarr held up his hands pacifyingly. "Now that would be a shame, certainly. And in any case, I can't imagine being fool enough to try and argue you into something you clearly don't want to do."

"But you see," she continued. "I told myself I had to be Khedathi. Not the daughter of clan Moirre, not--" her mouth twisted--"the beautiful Vemathi maiden waiting for her parents to make a marriage contract. I would be the strongest, fiercest Khedathi warrior in the desert." 

"No one doubts your strength, Vihena."

"Oh, yes, my _strength_ ," she said, and in the darkness of her voice there was the shadow of a body, broken on the floor. "I trained for months, you know, after what the Trickster did to me. I'm stronger now than I've ever been, and my sword-hand more skilled. I have fought against desert-born warriors and won. I have become everything I wanted--" her voice broke, abruptly--"and this is where it has led me. If Khehaddi had seen me, she would have been ashamed."

Remarr was silent. 

"So--I don't want to just go back to Khesst. To be that woman again. I want--" she shook her head in frustration. "I don't know what I want. I don't mean never to go back," she added. "They're my clan, still." She sighed. "And I have to tell Emirri. About how I dishonored myself."

Remarr said nothing, and one corner of her mouth quirked. "Ychass would've asked why I would do any such thing."

Remarr shrugged. "Ychass isn't Khedathi." Of course, by rights, neither was he, but sixteen years in the desert couldn't be erased, no matter what name he wore--any more, he supposed, than Vihena's years in the City could be left behind entirely.

"But then-- I don't know, Remarr. But I would like to have choices that don't shut me off from my friends."

"I am outcast, Vihena, and Ychass's people are not loved by yours. We do not have a home in the desert."

"And yet we traveled there together, you and I and the others. 'Tsan gave us other choices, once."

"'Tsan is gone now," Remarr said, not trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

"But we're still here," Vihena insisted. "In 'Tsan's name, can't we look for a path between?"

Remarr turned that over in his head. It sounded like a dream to him, unreal and likely to dissolve at the worst of moments. And yet--he had seen wonders he could never have conceived of since a red-haired woman met his eyes across a Vemathi hall. Perhaps this could be one more. "In 'Tsan's name, Vihena."


End file.
